


Rewind

by Spooks, thesuninside



Category: Justified
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Gen-ish until the epilogue, M/M, Second Chances, That's the point really, Time Fuckery, What-if (a lot of what-if), mentions of sports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25922185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spooks/pseuds/Spooks, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesuninside/pseuds/thesuninside
Summary: The light coming through the window behind him was very, very bright.  He kept his back to it, looking down at himself.  The hole in his chest closed as he watched, and he found himself remembering his name: Boyd Crowder.And then: Raylan shot me, and I’m dead.
Relationships: Boyd Crowder & Raylan Givens, Boyd Crowder/Raylan Givens
Comments: 27
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

The light coming through the window behind him was very, very bright. He kept his back to it, looking down at himself. The hole in his chest closed as he watched, and he found himself remembering his name. _Boyd Crowder. And Raylan shot me, and I’m dead_.

The last bit of information did not distress him. He felt . . . relieved. Curious, too, that he was still able to think, but perhaps this was the agonal paroxysms of his brain.

Movement in the kitchen. He looked towards it, to the doorway he’d last seen when Ava stood there with a shotgun, and saw—

His mama. 

Ines Crowder had been skinny, raw-boned, her shocking black hair and bright blue eyes passing down on to him. Bowman had been fair-haired, like their daddy. Boyd got Bo’s ruthlessness and Ines’ peculiar ways. She’d gone crazy, when he was a young teenager. She didn’t start raving, nothing to get her tossed in a hospital. She just . . . withdrew. Retreated, let the world pass her on by, and left her sons to the tender mercies of their father.

She stood there in the kitchen door, her Sunday dress pressed and starched like she was set to attend Easter service. Boyd felt ragged in his own clothing; he felt the shame on his arm again. What he’d done as a game, he’d told himself. Keep himself alive and relatively untouched in prison, keep himself free of owing Daddy for his safety. The words of the dead could be used, tools to turn a few skinheads to the designs he preferred. Robbing banks, making buys, the dangerous mischief. That he never really believed those words--well, now. He couldn’t decide if that made him a better person or a worse one, and in the end--well didn’t matter did it? Perhaps that was why he was here.

“A puppet pulling other puppets’ strings?” his mama said, coming to sit at the table near him. Sitting near her felt like sitting near an old box tv. Like all his hairs were standing up, the buzzing and static humming in the air. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I guess that’s about right.”

“Not the kind of life I wanted for you,” she told him. 

“Mama,” he asked after an incredulous moment. “What kind of life did you think I’d ever have, you leaving us to Daddy? Knowing he’d never let me go to college, never let me do anything but wither under his thumb?”

“I expected you’d find a way out, like I did.”

“You hid in your room and your books,” Boyd said, hearing in his voice the low burn of anger. “You hid until you went walking in the hills and we never found your body.”

“I made my escape,” she told him. “Don’t blame me for falling so far before making your own.” She looked, purposefully, at the place in his chest where Raylan Givens, his only friend, had shot him.

“I carry the responsibility for my choices,” Boyd told her. His anger was gone as abruptly as it had come. “But I’m not the only one who’s had a hand in my path.”

“No one has an untouched path, son,” she said. “But only one person takes the steps on it.”

“Never mind a push in the back, headwinds, or cave-ins.” Boyd smiled a little bit, feeling unsettled and on firm ground at the same time. This he could do, talk. All it took was them both dead to talk again.

Or maybe he was still dying, and this was the prelude to the end?

“It may be,” she answered.

“Now that just ain’t fair, Mama, reading my mind. I don’t get to choose my words.”

“Because you are so good at making choices.” The rejoinder was dry.

“Touche.” He’d forgotten her humor, how when her words hit, they were always on target. “So what choice will I be making now?”

“That is up to you, as you already well know,” she started.

“Do I?” But they were just words to fill the quiet that had snuck into his mind, into the house. She waited, while Boyd filled up on all the no-more and last-of. Books half-read--he had the habit of starting several at a time, leaving them different places, picking up right where he’d left off, and all would go unfinished. Another no-more: No more words would leave his mouth. But that wasn’t quite right, was it? Even as he considered the possibility that the great black was coming down, any second--that was not quite right.

Boyd felt his face stretch into a smile, his chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the bullet lodged in it. “I’m going to wake up.”

“If you want to.” Mama watched him.

He began to consider that she may not be his Mama at all. Mama never looked so pristine, so focused. And Mama had also blinked on occasion. 

Before Boyd could speak again, she opened her mouth: “The better question is _when_ you want to.” 

That was a hell of a question, wasn’t it, to loom up in his mind on the edge of so much darkness? He put all his attention on it, such that he could. He was familiar enough with scientific thinking to know that some believed time to be relative, that it contracted and expanded based on speed of movement and one’s position in space. He understood the idea that _now_ and _then_ and _soon_ were sometimes thought to be simultaneous. Of course, his own short lifespan--not even forty years--was not even a blink to something like . . . like whatever this was, wearing his mama’s face.

“Any time I like?”

She nodded. 

“And I don’t have to live the same way?”

“You choose,” she told him. 

“But how will I know? If I--did wake up, some time in my past, how would I know to take a different route? Oh--” And like that, he saw the edge of the sword. He’d wake up. He’d wake up a not-quite-forty year old in his younger man’s body--hell, even his child’s body, possibly--and he’d know everything, _everything_. He’d know how to conduct himself in the world, how to dodge his daddy’s most ingenious traps. Hell, when to bet on the University of Alabama winning a national football title, and when to bet against.

“You see,” she said, still unmoving, still so _still_. 

“My choice,” he said. _Hell, Boyd, you better make this a good one,_ he thought, aware that this might be the most important choice he was ever presented.

So. Walk backwards. 

_The last night_. When he took his sister-in-law hostage and all but forced Raylan to pull the trigger.

 _When he chose the Aryan Nation_. No. A different choice ended with him used like the prison toilet, maybe dead by his own hand.

 _Tax evasion._ Joke that it was, tax evasion with his tiny pension, living in a no-electricity shack in the holler, just wanting to drink himself to sleep to forget everything he’d seen in the desert. 

_The desert_. No. Not for anything would he go back to the desert.

 _The cave-in_. Now--now here was an event that deserved consideration. He and Raylan had been friends, then, thick as thieves. They’d been the youngest in the mine, probably only hired because of their last names and not wanting trouble with their daddies. The mines assumed, no doubt, that the scions of the Crowder-Givens crime kingdom (though kingdom was far too grand a description for Bo Crowder’s petty local shit-kicking) were in good favor with their fathers, and not in open defiance by seeking honest work. When that mountain had started to rumble, Boyd had grabbed on to Raylan’s coveralls, and hurled him skyward, pushing him ahead, yelling invectives the whole way. Raylan didn’t quit running, though, until he’d left Harlan and made it to . . . where ever he’d gone, after. 

It was tempting, to choose the day of the cave in. It felt like an axis. But his life had already been well on the downward path by then, hadn’t it? He didn’t find out until much later, after he got out of prison the first time, when his daddy dropped a stack of mail onto his lap, each one with a university name on it, each one opened, the contents rifled through and too old to be of any use. “Throw ‘em in the fire,” his daddy had commanded, and Boyd had done so, forcing a kind of self-derisive grin through his rage. He’d wanted to kill his daddy, that night. Not for the first time, and of course not for the last.

Daddy had already been stealing his mail, by the day of the cave-in. Truthfully, Daddy had been planning Boyd’s future since before Bowman learned to hold a football in his hands, when Boyd was already taking after Mama with his nose in a book and his head nowhere near Harlan. 

The idea of potential loomed large and sudden, as inescapable and not much kinder than oblivion had.

Still. The idea of being around the young, the isolation of it. Then again, was that so different from speaking to a wide room that only seemed to echo back his own voice?

“I’m ready.” 

The creature smiled with his mama’s lips.


	2. Chapter 2

Boyd blinked, and woke up with a face full of sun and the smell of stale coffee in the air. He was in the house, his old room over the porch. 

It flooded back all of a sudden--when he moved to this room, why--He’d switched when Bowman started trying to sneak out, nearly broke his leg falling off the porch roof, ambitious for a little freedom. Now Bowman snuck down the stairs by climbing over the rail and tiptoeing down on the outside. He’d cling on with his toes and holding onto the rail, just because he couldn’t remember which stairs creaked. Boyd remembered watching his brother’s face splitting with a I’m-so-smart grin,  _ Lookee here, what I figured.  _ At eleven, it’s not like Bowman had anything more clandestine to do than running around in the woods, but there was a thrill to sneaking out.

That wasn’t so long ago, anymore.

Boyd remembers the day after that one, when it was just him and Mama in the house, throwing a few extra nails into the bannister just in case. They were there now, he knew if he checked he’d see them, fresh driven.

And in the future--not yet, Boyd knew, but the near future for Bowman--that there’d be a growth spurt and Bowman figuring out how to climb out the window, stretch his arms, and have not too much of a drop. 

That would be for about a year or so after that before Daddy stopped staying at home entirely, and Mama didn’t care at all. Bowman would then, not so long after, start using the stairs like a normal person. 

Boyd sat up and looked at his unmarked hands and wondered, exactly when he was in relation to all that near-future. How near? Memories weren’t so clear, not drawn out on a line as much sign posts set up, but he knew this was not far from that time if he was in this front bedroom. This is when the sun started waking him, when he started seeing the mornings bright instead of the dying of the day. 

Getting to his feet and opening the window was as easy as thinking. No twinge in his back, no stiffness in his knees, none of those hints of what else was coming with age. But he did not forget them, and breathed in the pollen and morning’s humidity like a man tasting water after a long dry spell.

Potential.  _ Now don’t go fucking this up. _

***

He found, after some snooping into his own belongings, a backpack stuffed with books from the school library and his homework, mostly complete. He’d liked school as a child, but lacked discipline, and he’d loved his own books much more than algebra. But based on the names of the teachers and the subjects, he could identify his age. He was a sophomore in high school, fifteen from where they were in the textbooks--the beginning. He was enrolled in geometry, Spanish, and honors English. His memories creaked open a little bit more, spilling out other details. He found a little notebook that had served for him to record events and assignments, in a code he’d invented himself as an amusement.

Jesus, he couldn’t even legally drive. And it would be half a decade before he could legally drink.

A clatter in the hallway--Bowman. Bowman shoved open Boyd’s door, his bright blond head leading the way. “You gon’ miss the bus!” he hooted before hauling ass down the hall and down the stairs, hitting every creak.

It was a gut punch, seeing his brother’s young and happy face. Boyd sat heavily on his bed, breathing hard all of a sudden and struggling to order his mind. He just needed enough calm to last right now. Maybe he’d ditch school today.

_ Right, because that’s the best way to begin your second chance. _

He had to get out of the hollers, and he had to forge his own road. But all paths started with early steps. 

He stood up quickly, putting on clothes that were not kept in any manner of good repair. How careless he’d been, waiting on Mama to mend or Daddy’s pride. Something for later though. First, school. 

Mama stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking him square in the eyes. Suddenly taken with a fit of irreality, he stood shock still, one step up and only barely taller than her for it.

“Mama?” The sound of his own voice made him snap his mouth shut.

She looked at him, and nodded once. “Go on then. Get to it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He made himself walk past her, not rushing, feeling caught and almost like he was escaping--

She was going up the stairs though, paying him no more mind, starting to hum under her breath already. Her footsteps were light, and she avoided every step that creaked.

***

By the time Boyd got off the bus he’d mentally drafted at least five different speeches about why it is not acceptable to cram the youth and hope of America onto tin-and-steel oversized yellow coffins three to a seat and screaming, piloted into their futures by a man who took out his hearing aids to get through his shift.

“You look like you sucked ten lemons, Boyd,” Bowman chirped at him, goddamn chirped with a voice that would be cracking over the next few years. The high school and middle were connected, so they got off at the same final stop. Elementary was already gone, a mile up the road.

“I am contemplating civil disobedience in protest of the deplorable conditions of our transportation to our mandated subpar schooling,” Boyd drawled out, knowing fine well that he would have thought such things but maybe would not have said them this young.

Bowman blinked a few times at him, trying to follow, “Yeah, school sucks but football is great.”

Boyd decided to just go with the first answer that came to mind: “You got practice today?” 

“Yeah! They’re finally trying me at running back.” 

“‘Bout time,” Boyd returned, easy, and decided to add to his growing list of things to do--if Bowman had better grades, he actually might’ve gotten a real football scholarship. 

What would he’ve done if he’d gotten the chance Boyd did, a second time around?

Now that was a thought that deserved some broader consideration, but not just yet. How the hell was he going to remember his locker combination? The thought made him laugh, and that drew a couple funny looks that he could not bring himself to mind.

When he reached the locker, whatever powers had brought him to this point in his life had also seen fit to remind him of the combination--as long as he didn’t think about it directly.

As he looked around, the faces of his classmates seemed impossibly young. A whole host of fates had befallen their Evarts High School class. There was Becky Sims, who was no doubt already pregnant with her first child. Tommy Joe Harker would end up dead, a drunk driving accident that killed him, his little brother Burt, and two of their friends. Maddie Smith, Ernest Wright, and Linda Holcomb, among others, would be addicted to various pills before graduation.

And then there was Raylan Givens.

Raylan came from the cafeteria where, Boyd knew, Raylan got free meals. His shoes were duct-taped together. His backpack was new this school year but cheap, and Boyd knew, too, that this was because one of their eighth grade teachers had bought his school supplies for several years. Raylan’s fellow marshals wouldn’t have recognized him, skinny and looking exhausted, not the cool and untouched deputy marshal. His face was the same, though. He was a pretty boy. Always had been. And Arlo didn’t much aim for his face anymore.

He caught Boyd looking. “Take a picture, Crowder,” Raylan said, slammed his locker shut, and shuffled off.

Boyd was moving before he really thought about it, catching up with Raylan. “Now hold on, I wasn’t staring at you,” he lied, easy as breathing.

“Who was behind me then?” Raylan shot back over his shoulder. Their homerooms were the same direction, same hall even. 

It wasn’t anything to fall into step beside Raylan. They weren’t really friends just yet, but they weren’t  _ not,  _ and when your Daddy was Bo Crowder--or Arlo Givens for that matter--that counted. __ It counted for a lot, though not as much as it would. Though . . . 

Raylan was going to make the varsity baseball team this year, move into next year and make it nearly through before he and Dickie Bennett ended each other’s chances at that. For a while, though, everyone would see what Raylan could be. Including Raylan. 

“You even here?” Raylan turned and knocked Boyd’s head like it was a door. 

“That’s a complicated answer that I’m not sure I am qualified to give,” Boyd ducked his head, belatedly; it was expected.

“The hell that mean?”

“Not sure, honestly.” Boyd shrugged. 

“Bad sign, you being honest.” Raylan’s grin was quick and wide, then gone in a flash. This was his room, and he was turning into it. “See you later.”

“See you,” Boyd returned, and went on down the hall, head already elsewhere once again. In the room, he had ten minutes of nothing in particular, and that should give him enough time to finish what homework his younger self--no, he can’t think like that--that he didn’t do. It was just (much, much) earlier. 

When he headed to the first class, he planned on paying attention, applying his intellect instead of reading through most of it. But on the way, he let his mind work again. One thing was becoming crystal, and that was that he had planning to do. This was not as simple as one thing and only for himself. He needed guidelines, rules. To keep himself, to keep his goals in mind. Big ideas and move into the little ones.

One: Figure out the end goal, other than getting out. Other than not dying to a bullet he all but begged for, of course. But what was the point of that? 

Not being his father’s son. Finding something to really believe in? What was the point of that?

Be happy?

Boyd nearly laughed again, the thought hitting as nearly absurd. And that was another thing--it seemed that he no longer had his self-possession. Or maybe that as the cocktail of hormones and changes he still wasn’t done going through. Goddamn, who in their right mind wanted to go through growing up again, and then went on and did it?

But geometry was starting, and his decision to apply himself was at least one he’d made.

***

Translated, his journal read:

_ Tennessee (national championships 1999) _ _  
_ _ University of Alabama (Nick Saban years) _ _  
_ _ Bet on Appalachian State vs Michigan in 2007 _ _  
_ _ Sell airline stocks before Sept 10 2001 _ _  
_ _ Buy stock in Google, Amazon _

On the following pages:

_ Big plan: don’t fuck it up. _ _  
_ _ Definitions: meaning don’t end up in jail, on Daddy’s payroll, or in the army. _

On the next page, one word:

_ Raylan _

***


	3. Chapter 3

“Have a seat, Boyd,” Mr. Covington, told him. Mr. Covington was a big man with a bald head and glasses. His classroom was Boyd’s favorite, had been the first time through as well. Posters of literary quotes hung above the wall, along with a copy of the Ten Commandments. His eyes lingered there, bemused, thinking about the First Amendment. 

Boyd sat. He sat very still, though he could remember being a jittery bastard at times when he was younger. Jittery and bored. No wonder he’d gotten a reputation for crazy. 

“How can I help you, Mr. Covington?”

“I want to talk to you about this essay you wrote.” Mr. Covington produced it from behind him on the desk. “Listen, I’m not going to go in circles with you. Since when did you write essays like this? I know you’re a reader, but this.” He waved the paper, which Boyd noted was ungraded.

“I guess I’m applying myself,” Boyd told him, smooth and easy. “I do enjoy your class, sir, and I know that this here’s a thankless job, teaching the poor, illiterate children of poor, illiterate families.”

Mr. Covington blinked a few times, but did not seem bothered. He was a retired Marine; he’d fought in Vietnam in the sixties. Sometimes, he’d tell them little stories about his time in the war. Not much at all seemed to bother him. “You’ve been able to do this the whole time, huh?”

“Truthfully, I finished the required reading for the class the first week. I had essays half-written for each book, too.” He shrugged. “Only so I could go on to reading what I wanted.” Then, he leaned over, pulled out the unabridged version of  _ Les Miserables _ he’d found in the dustiest corner of the school library. “But you see, I thought I’d read the whole story. And what I found there, Mr. Covington, were themes I found analogous to my own life and circumstances.”

“Yes, I read the essay. All nine pages of it. You know your classmates turned in two, maybe three?” He seemed to be considering something, then he went behind his desk, removed a battered paperback book. He handed this book to Boyd. “I don’t recommend this to students, generally. Most of your classmates can’t get past the title.” After a pause, he admitted, “Most of your teachers don’t, either.”

Boyd took the old copy of  _ Moby Dick _ in his hands. He had read it before, but it’d been a long time. “Is this an extra assignment?”

“Call it an opportunity. Write an essay, and you and I will polish it up. There’s a Herman Melville essay contest every year. It’s not much of a prize, but it’d be something. Think about it.”

He smiled. “Call me Ishmael,” he told Mr. Covington, plans forming for an essay already.

***

Things at home were already different than he remembered them. Mama took herself onto the porch more often, her Bible open on her lap, slowly turning the fragile pages. She’d start over from Genesis again, eventually. Bowman kept trying to draw her into conversation, but she didn’t respond, not even to turn her face. It hurt Boyd to see her, but he’d mourned her long ago, and the distance allowed him to see the damage it did to Bowman. 

He pulled Bowman inside, to the kitchen table, and dug in the cabinets until he found condensed milk, Hershey’s powder, and two cups. He began assembling hot cocoa on the stovetop, adding some milk from the fridge. It was steaming before Bowman spoke. “She mad at me?” Bowman asked, in a voice that sounded awfully young.

“She is not,” Boyd told him. The concoction on the stove smelled sweet and was too thick, so Boyd cut it with some more milk. It made a hell of a lot of cocoa, but who cared? Boyd would just put it aside for later. “She’s not well, Bowman. She isn’t really here, in her mind.”

“She gonna come back?”

“Maybe,” Boyd told him. “For little bits of time. So when she seems present, then you love on her and tell her all you gotta tell her. But her going away--that’s nothing to do with you.” Boyd poured them both out some of the drink, and sat down at the table with his brother. Bowman’s eyes were wet, but Boyd didn’t mention it.

“I wish Daddy were here more. I bet she’d wake up for him.”

Boyd shook his head. He didn’t want to say, right now, that Daddy was part of the reason she’d fled so fast and so far into her own mind. “It ain’t about us,” Boyd said again. “Not her bein’ here, not her leavin’ either. It’s about her. But you listen to me--I’m gonna make sure things work out around here. You hear me?”

Bowman shot him the scowling look universal to all nearly-twelve year olds. “You ain’t my daddy,” he flung it, like that was a barb instead of a compliment.

“You got that right, asshole,” Boyd told him, grinning. “But I am the man knows how to cook supper, and if you want any, you’ll mind. I ain’t gonna be unreasonable. But we’re gonna start right now. Go get your homework. You an’ me, we’re gonna do our homework every night, right here at this table. And when we done, we’re gonna go fishin’ or throwing the football, then I’ll make supper.”

Bowman was thinking about protesting that he could cook. But he took a sip of the cocoa, then a bigger gulp. “I ain’t so good at English,” he said. “It’s stupid.”

Boyd clutched his own chest, melodramatically. “My own brother, uttering such venom. Go get your books, let’s get to it.”

*** 

At the top of another page in his journal:

_ Bowman _ _   
_ _ 1) Keep him from being a wife-beating asshole _ _   
_ _ 2) Good grades means a better chance at a football scholarship _ _   
_ _ 3) Steer clear of Ava _

The page about Raylan was still blank.

***

Other pages started filling up, little bits of things between a few do-not-forgets and important objectives, setting up for more fortunate results:

_ Be gone before the cave-in.  _

_ Start managing Daddy by anticipating, but not too much. Appear agreeable and curious but do not cross the line into getting obligated. _

_ Be kind to Mags before her husband gets shot.  _

_ Johnny’s got a secret?  _

_ Mama - Can I pull her back? Research. Keep trying to be around. _

The last one got a couple underlines. It sent him the library and the psychology section, most of which he found to be unhelpful or entirely obvious. It galled him a little that someone got paid to study folks and conclude that the way one is raised may influence the person they become. Well goddamn, no shit?

Meanwhile, Raylan’s page got a few notes, but those were admittedly, just to make himself feel a bit less like he was doing nothing:

_ Make the time, cancer’s going to sneak in on his mama again.  _

It was a shit entry, and Boyd wasn’t sure how that was going to be different at all. 

***

Turned out though, Raylan had noticed the change in him as of late. As of always now, technically. At lunch, they sat at the same table as Johnny (who was making a big show of opening the milk carton for the freshman he was going with) and a few others Raylan played park ball and JV with. They were all right, and Boyd didn’t quite give a shit about baseball as a game all on its own, but it always looked more normal to act like he cared.

Lately he’d been reading more about football and conditioning and whatnot, to help out Bowman.

“--That’s what I mean, right there. You ain’t even here, Boyd.” That was Raylan’s voice, and a poke in the elbow accompanying it. 

Boyd realized he’d stopped eating, staring a little bit into space and planning. He did sometimes wonder how it looked, how he went from a jittery boy who read and ignored most things around him, to not jittering at all but focusing in on things that mattered more. Well he goddamn hoped they would matter, at least.

“Now where else would I be?” Boyd asked.

“Goddamn library, you live there now donnya?” Johnny chimed in, while also eating a forkful of corn. His freshman girlfriend did not look too impressed, as Johnny went on, “Used to just go all the time, wouldn’t spend hours there. Bowman said you even dragged him a few times.”

“I know that was a mistake,” Boyd said, drawling it out. 

The table laughed, those listening, though it wasn’t too funny. Maybe just enough.

Boyd grinned a little bit, and picked up his fork for something to do. He’d prefer something else, but he gave Raylan the apple off his tray before they even sat down. Been doing that for years.

“You like a ghost sometimes, though,” Raylan shrugged, when the conversation floated on to Jobe (an unfortunately named beanpole of a boy) and his new haircut his mama gave him.

“How is that?” Boyd found himself having to ask, despite the other need to pass it off as nothing, maybe let the topic die.

“You’re not around so much, running home and going to the library on your own, whatever it is you’ve started just gettin’ up to--you’d tell me if you got a girlfriend, wouldn’t you?”

That was a pole-axing question if Boyd ever heard one. “I suppose I would.” But meanwhile he was thinking if he had a girlfriend, it would be for show. The idea of actually getting with a teenage girl was supposed to be a vaunted goal for most men, and here he was a teenage boy with good chances and the idea turned his stomach a little bit.

But then again, the girls he’d gone with the first time were mostly to get Daddy off his case. Not many of them really sparked that overwhelming interest and  _ need  _ that seemed to beset his peers.

“There you go again--” Raylan waved his second apple, half eaten, at Boyd.

“Come over after school, see what exciting things I’m getting up to, if you are so curious.” Boyd almost felt like it was too much, because the first time he was this age?  _ No one came to the house. What would they say about Mama? _

Raylan grinned, “You sure? No one comes over to your house.” The last part was a little quieter.

“Don’t they? Never realized,” he said, dry and grinning. “Daddy used to get annoyed, but he’s not home much. Busy, busy.” Which is as close as Boyd would ever get to saying anything about Daddy’s business.

That was something that thus far was remaining the same.

“All right then.” Raylan nodded once, like he was thinking it over even while agreeing.

“All right.”

***

In the scheme of things, small acts of criminality like forging a note to ride home on a different bus were pettier than even the sorts of things boys their age and class got up to on the regular: stealing cigarettes and beer from their elders, lighting firecrackers they had no business possessing, sneaking rides over to Audrey’s to watch the girls enter and leave the trailers. Boyd had partaken in all these events (he sold the cigarettes, drank the beer; enthusiastically exploded firecrackers; mostly served as lookout for the excursions to Audrey’s). It was not even worth thinking about to hand the driver of Boyd’s bus the forged note. 

Bowman was petulant from the moment Raylan stepped off the bus with them. “How come you can have a friend over but I can’t, huh?”

“We have us a deal, Bowman,” Boyd reminded him. “Besides, Raylan’s here to join in on our fun little tradition.”   
  
“You is?” Bowman looked at Raylan with a mix of awe and suspicion. Raylan was both the son of their daddy’s most mulish enforcer, but he was also the charming son-of-a-bitch he was, just naturally. Even without the hat, the swagger, and the star; with his ten dollar shoes still taped together, Raylan Givens could charm. He did so now, taking Boyd’s cue and mollifying Bowman.

“Sure am,” he said. “Lookin’ forward to it.”

“We gon’ play football after homework, then! I bet you can throw the ball decent. Boyd throws like a girl.”

Boyd tsked. “I throw like a boy who’s never cared for the sport except where you’re involved,” he corrected. Raylan was still recovering, apparently, from the revelation of the first item on their itinerary. 

“Homework?” he asked as they walked up the steps to the screen door.

“My deal with Bowman,” Boyd said. “We do our homework, then football or whatever, and then I make supper. Of course, if you want to partake of the meal, you’re welcome.” Boyd said it because he always would’ve said it, if Raylan had come over, the first time around. Boyd knew the cupboards of the Givens household were essentially bare; he also knew that Raylan went without, so his mama could have something to eat. 

“What the hell?” Raylan asked, under his breath and for Boyd’s ears only. Bowman went on past them to the dining room table, hauling out his books. Through Boyd’s stubbornness, Bowman had finally grasped PEMDAS, and his algebra homework was always taken out first. English was still like pulling teeth. The older boys followed him, Boyd getting out his things and making tidy stacks, Raylan only pulling out what he needed, like he was prepared to bolt at the first sign of trouble.

Boyd’s ears were primed for any sound from Mama, but she must’ve been sleeping (or just . . . apart) in her upstairs bedroom. 

“You know,” Boyd said, eyeing Raylan’s geometry notes critically. “I think I’ve seen better spelling from chickens in the yard.”

“Hey, screw you,” Raylan muttered. “Not like it really matters, I know what it means.”

“I guess you’ll learn it eventually,” Boyd replied, philosophical about it. After all, the US Marshal Service would probably frown upon one of their agents spelling things like _ ackcute, tryangel,  _ and  _ millyun. _

Raylan rolled his eyes and proceeded to get to work. They had the same teacher, in different periods, so their homework was the same--odd numbers only, 1-21, show your work. Boyd finished his rapidly, then took Bowman’s work to check it over, pleased to see he’d hardly made any mistakes this time through. He complimented his brother’s work, then pulled up a chair beside him and they plodded through diagramming sentences together. 

Raylan excused himself to the bathroom at some point, and he’d been gone a good long time before Boyd realized he’d not come back. Boyd’s head jerked upright in alarm--old reflexive feeling of  _ Mama _ and the desire to protect her (privacy, reputation?). He stood up, leaving Bowman to it.

It didn’t take much to find them. The front door open with the screendoor closed let in the wind and the quiet murmurs. Mama was sitting in her favorite rocker, one of a pair Daddy brought home when Boyd was so young he had to climb up into one. Mama wanted a place to rock Bowman.

Raylan sat on the edge of the porch though, all long limbs everywhere--one leg dangling, the other folded up, arms propped behind him as he turned his head to look up at Mama in her chair. 

Who was talking, “--Frances always makes me laugh, her razor tongue behind a sweet smile.”

Raylan grinned, all over his face, and said, “Yes, Mizz Ines, I’ll tell her.”

Boyd hesitated, feeling like he was intruding, or . . . more like he didn’t want to interrupt. It’d been a long time since someone else came to the house, and he didn’t want to turn it sour. But Mama was already turning, her expression  _ present  _ and her eyes focusing on him.

“I stole Raylan to ask him after his mama. Feel like I’ve not seen Frances in years,” she said.

Come to think on it, she might be right. “Easy to fix. You saved Raylan listening to us suffering through dissecting sentences to their component parts.”

“Thank you, Mizz Ines,” Raylan chimed in.

And Mama laughed. “Go on then, sounds like the worst is over.” She was already running her fingers over the Bible in her lap, a restless sort of fidget that Boyd knew was the prelude to one of her retreats.

Raylan unfolded, standing up, and gave her a little mock-gentlemanly bow and another  _ nice-to-see-you  _ before heading on inside. Boyd grinned at him, but looked past, and saw the moment Mama bent her head and opened the book.

“It’s true, you have missed the worst, Raylan,” Boyd decided to say, not wanting to mention anymore about Mama just yet. Or maybe at all. 

“I didn’t even know she was home,” Raylan said.

“She usually is,” Boyd found himself choosing his words carefully, meting them out, “But she sometimes just stays upstairs in her room.”

“That so? She was asking for my mama, you think it’d be okay if she came by?” Raylan asked, with the ingrained understanding that the activities of their fathers required such a double-checking. Mostly Boyd’s Daddy though.

“I do indeed. Afternoons are a better time. Or Saturday mornings,” Boyd said. And he did hope that it was to be taken as the times to avoid Daddy and business, but not a give-away that there were good times (and thus, bad ones) for Mama. It was more complicated than that. Sometimes she still lit up for Daddy, but not when he was up to business. Daddy had stopped asking her advice on it years ago, from Boyd’s recollection. Long enough that Bowman probably had no idea Daddy used to consult her wisdom at all.

Raylan, for his part, had a flicker of an expression that settled on acceptance and a nod, “We’ll see what we can manage. Maybe Saturday. Mama’s been keepin’ in lately, but Saturdays are usually good.”

For his part, Boyd accepted that and didn’t think too much about how Saturday morning followed Friday night, and the chances of ol’ Arlo being dead asleep or not even back yet. Some things, there could be no change. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe I can ask Mama to show us how to make those biscuits she does up like she’s casting a spell on the dough.”

“If by show you mean let us eat them, then hell yes,” Raylan said.

“Did you say biscuits?” Bowman looked excited enough that his eyes might pop out.

“We will have to see how she feels about it come Saturday,” Boyd told his brother, a hint of caution hiding behind his words.

That, to a little bit of Boyd’s surprise, Bowman actually caught and held onto. “Oh well yeah, it’s up to Mama of course it is.”

A glance at Raylan showed that Raylan had picked up on something, and he always was sharp, but he just let it pass on: “It about time to throw around the ball?”

“Let’s go around back, or side yard.” Mama was out front, after all. He wasn’t quite ready to let on that she might have retreated far enough that she wouldn’t be bothered by them.

Bowman jumped up and hauled ass out the back, calling over his shoulder, “Lemme show you how fast I can run!”

***

Boyd wasn’t sure if he should update the journal on the day’s events--he had cultivated the habit of checking and updating, revising, every night, or just thinking about it.

He decided to let himself think on it more, and read over his other pages instead. He was reading it over when he heard the rumble of a pickup truck--his daddy’s. He hadn’t seen Bo in the few weeks since he’d started over. He closed the journal in a hurry, shoved it in his backpack, and headed downstairs to be sitting in the livingroom with Bowman, who was watching something on TV. Boyd had brought with him a copy of  _ Starship Troopers _ , thinking his father would like the hypermasculine title, and Daddy’d never read any of it enough to know it was more interesting to read as satire. 

He’d just opened the book when Bo came in, younger than Boyd had last seen him. The scale of him had always been part of Boyd’s overall impression of him. Bo was a big man, with a big temper, who could be brutal or charming in turn. Unlike the rattlesnake that was Arlo, Bo was barrel-chested and broad. His hands always fell heavily on the shoulders of people he talked to, his blunt fingers digging into muscle in a way that was just short of painful. Everything about the man was a test.

“Hey, Daddy!” Bowman chirped when Bo clomped into the living room. 

“Boys,” Bo said. Boyd looked up from his book, echoed Bowman’s greeting, and followed up by asking if Bo wanted any supper. “Your mama cook?” Bo asked him.

“No, just me. I ain’t as good as Mama, of course, but there’s some leftovers.” He stood up, as if to head into the kitchen.

Bo laughed a little. “Okay, let’s see it. Jesus, you cookin’ and cleanin’ around here. You gonna want me to buy you a dress next?”

“I reckon I’d look mighty strange,” Boyd said, with a small grin that showed his daddy he was partaking in his humor. “Just figured I’d take care of the family while you were busy, is all. It’s ham and beans.”

Boyd went into the kitchen and got the plate out of the fridge. He looked down at it.  _ Poison? _

He dismissed the thought, but not immediately. He put the plate in the microwave, and when the machine dinged, he took the plate and flatware to his daddy, who’d crowded onto the couch beside Bowman and turned the TV to something else.

“Here you go,” Boyd told his father.

Bo never said thank you, but he didn’t make another comment that night about Boyd in a dress. Boyd expected it was a reprieve. 


	4. Chapter 4

The days passed, as days do, adjustments measured and made, and Mama did not manage biscuits that Saturday morning, getting distracted and staring out until Mizz Frances came in, trailed by Raylan after Boyd answered the door. With his foreknowledge, Boyd wondered how no one saw how Raylan’s mama was sick-thin with a tired bend to her shoulders. But then she smiled wide--the same one that would sometimes stretch Raylan’s face--and Boyd suspected why.

She probably knew already. That was her business, but it cast a shadow on the morning, even as Mama came to and made the sweet tea-- _Coffee is not for you tads just yet, especially not you, Bowman--_ that they drank just a bit later with what counted as a late breakfast, but wasn’t quite the hoity sort of thing a “brunch” apparently was. 

When they finished up, Mama sending Bowman to look in a back cupboard for the last of some preserves made from the wild muscadines last year, that was when Daddy appeared in the house again. He was heralded by the sound of the screendoor banging shut, the reverb of its bounce closing every mouth around the table.

Boyd wondered if he’d have noticed that before. Maybe the situation never came up, but maybe if he didn’t notice, he might’ve still _known._ Just as he knew the way his heart beat up in his throat all of a sudden.

“Well hell, hello, Frances. Didn’t know we was having company,” Daddy’s smile was wide and his arms spread out, a welcoming gesture that he may even have meant in his own particular way. “Arlo ain’t around here somewhere, is he?”

“He is not, Bo,” Mizz Frances said, her smile less wide, but somehow still genuine. “He had a good time last night though, he told me y’all got up to it.”

Boyd realized he’d never wondered what Daddy’s men’s wives or women thought about the business. But they had to know who they married. They weren’t fools. Just like he and Bowman, and Raylan--hell. They knew who their daddies were.

Meanwhile, Daddy’s laugh was genuine, and Bowman hopped up from his chair to let him sit, then hovered near Daddy’s elbow--though not in his way, of course not.

Boyd watched his Daddy suddenly become the center of the room, just like that. The center of it. What was that, remembers it--what happens when the center cannot hold. Goddamn chaos. Better or worse, like it or not, the truth is the truth. 

***

In his journal, fully aware that to succeed at this particular objective would take a great deal of canniness indeed: 

_Daddy - Convince him that all things are his ideas, and for his best interests._

Now, how to make that happen?

***

The days grew shorter and cooler and the trees burst into colors that even the locals never got tired of. Daddy didn’t seem to mind Boyd taking on more responsibility, motivating Bowman and caring for Mama. He didn’t say anything to forbid Rayan and Mizz Frances from coming over, either. Boyd thought it was good for both of the women, and Boyd knew it was good for Bowman, to have somebody to run around tirelessly with him. Raylan more than fit that bill. And Boyd . . . well. Boyd tried not to take too much pleasure in knowing his brother, his mother, and Raylan--having a chance to do it right.

Boyd kept up his work, polished his Melville essay with Mr. Covington, and off it went to the Nantucket Literary Legacy’s Youth Competition. Boyd attended Bowman’s Thursday night football games, every single one of them. On a Thursday in October, Mama got herself dressed and got in Johnny’s truck when he came by to pick Boyd up to go attend, and Boyd rode in the truck bed. This was new. This had never happened, never, but when Bowman spotted her, he lit up like a Christmas tree, and played like he never had before. Boyd remained by his mother like a protective sentinel.

In the second half, Raylan appeared, spotted them, and loped up the bleachers. He was wearing a UK baseball hat and a thick flannel jacket that no doubt belonged to Arlo. “Hey, Boyd. Mizz Ines.”

“Hello, Raylan,” Mama said. She was so present, and doing so good. 

“Hey there,” Boyd managed. “Whatchoo doin’ at a JV game?”

“That running back, I’m sorta his side coach,” Raylan said with a grin, sitting on Mama’s other side. He had a bag of popcorn, which he offered over. Mama took it and ate a few bites, thanking him. Raylan looked pleased. As the night grew colder, the boys stayed close to Mama, to shield her from the wind. Mama talked to Raylan about his own mama, about school. Baseball tryouts were in February, and he was hoping to go out for the school team. 

Raylan rode back with them, in the bed of Johnny’s truck, tucked right in beside Boyd. Bowman was spending the night with some other boys on the team, having a little celebration of sorts. After Mama lit out of the truck and headed upstairs, Johnny lingered, talking to Raylan about baseball and girls. When Raylan smiled and said, “Maybe we’ll end up on the team together,” Johnny blushed and ducked his head. Boyd thought, _Well, there’s Johnny’s secret. I wonder if he even knows?_

“I ought to be going back,” Johnny said. “See you boys in the morning. Unless you need a ride home, Raylan?”

“Naw,” Raylan said. “I’m spending the night.” This was news to Boyd, but he played along. Raylan _did_ have his backpack with him, after all.

“Well, alright then.” Still Johnny lingered.

“Goodnight, Johnny,” Boyd prompted him.

“Right,” Johnny said, turning and finally leaving. 

Boyd wondered if _Raylan_ knew. 

Well, Raylan turned to Boyd. “Sorry for invitin’ myself over.”

“Arlo at home?” Boyd guessed. Raylan’s face got really hard, like he’d put on a mask, and he nodded. “And in a mood, I guess. Okay. Come on. Mama’ll be in bed already, so be quiet.”

Mama’s bedroom was at the back of the house, and Boyd’s at the front. He and Raylan went up the stairs and Boyd closed the door behind them. They were just lucky Bo was out, and likely would be most of the weekend. Boyd wondered whether it was a prediciliction of his father’s career to work extra on weekends. Boyd himself had never kept to much of a schedule when he was attempting to be a criminal.

Raylan hadn’t ever been in Boyd’s room--no, that wasn’t true. There was a time, before they started school, when their daddies still got on and their mamas helped each other out. Boyd could remember trying to get Raylan to sit still and read to him from a book, but he couldn’t remember the book. 

“You’re starin’ into space again,” Raylan told him, putting his backpack down on the floor. “You okay, Boyd?”

It would have been easier to deal with mockery, but standing there, isolated but more connected than he’d ever managed in his real life, true concern from someone he was beginning to think of as a friend . . . well it disarmed him a little. He resolved to be very careful. “I’m fine,” he said, after that moment, just seconds, of gathering. “I’ve just been thinking of some things lately. I got a sleeping bag, if that’ll do you for tonight.”

“That’ll be fine,” Raylan said with a small frown, and Boyd wondered when he gained the ability to tell when his questions were being dodged and directed. Boyd went to the big closet in the hall and got the sleeping bag, got Bowman’s pillow from his bed and, with the thoughtfulness of an adult and not a fifteen year old boy, put on a clean pillowcase. He returned to find Raylan standing in his room, holding one of Boyd’s childhood treasures: a model of the space shuttle that he’d gotten one Christmas, and painstakingly built over the course of four months. His uncle Henry, Johnny’s daddy, had helped him with it. Another thing to put on his to-do list, when he got a chance.

“You a space nerd?” Raylan asked him, not venomous but curious. For Raylan, Boyd suspected, the world and its inhabitants were categorized. His categories had no doubt changed and grown more sophisticated over the years, but the way of thinking remained. 

“I am many things,” Boyd told him. “I do enjoy speculative fiction--that would be nerd things.” He put the pillow and the sleeping bag down. “But you like westerns, so let’s not throw stones.”

Raylan shot him a crooked grin. He put the model down carefully, then continued a slow, restless orbit of Boyd’s bedroom, looking at everything on Boyd’s bookshelves and walls. It was very much a boy’s bedroom, baseball caps on the dresser, a tacklebox in the corner, and a camo jacket on the back of the closet door. “All these books. How you get so many?”

“The library sells their used ones. A quarter for a shopping bag.”

“ _Moby Dick,”_ Raylan said, reading the title of a thick hardcover on the shelf, not the battered old book Boyd had borrowed from Mr. Covington. He snickered, because he was fifteen. 

“Not a penis in sight,” Boyd dead-panned.

Raylan cracked up, covering his mouth to try and keep it silent and succeeding, but thereby tripped right into nearly giggling. Boyd felt himself catch on and covered his mouth too, swept up in just feeling amused. Not, for a few slipping moments, thinking on the tomorrows ahead just waiting to become yesterdays.

When they had a hold of themselves, Raylan finished his tour of the room and settled down to sit on the sleeping bag. Boyd mirrored that and sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed.

“So, you’re okay, and you know you’re acting different,” Raylan was looking at him again, seeming to watch how he even breathed. “You go away and come back sometimes, too.” 

And Raylan blinked, his eyes darting in the direction of--the door, the back of the house--and back to Boyd again. Rayland had just glanced towards Mama’s room, and he felt a bit shook.

“I take after Mama, but not like that,” Boyd said, trying to push certainty of that fact into his tone.

“You sound so sure, Boyd, but how would you even know?” Raylan pushed, face going a little tight.

How was he supposed to--it felt like standing at the top of a mineshaft, feeling the deep wind pushed up to the surface suddenly give out, making the fall seem that much more inevitable. 

And Boyd realized, he just wandered off again, just from the further drawing together of Raylan’s eyebrows and the steadiness of his stare. 

“I--know. But I don’t.” _I am older now than Mama was when she made her final retreat._

“You changed _sudden_.”

“I know.” 

And Raylan took a quick breath, and pressed on, maybe one more time, maybe not--”Did something happen?”

He should not feel so affected by the pressings of-- _The only friend you ever had, who ended your miserable life because you all but asked for it. Craved it._ That was not this Raylan. Yet. Or maybe it never would be now. Boyd drew his legs up, knees near to being able to hug onto them, despite being aware of how much of a tell that was.

Raylan waited, visibly keeping himself in check. 

“I had a dream,” Boyd decided, said. His journal, his plans should be enough, but goddamn they were not. The secret felt like a hollow he had carved around himself. “I had a dream. In it, we were grown up.”

Raylan let go of some of his tension, his shoulder relaxing--relief, maybe--and nodded again. Keeping his mouth still shut.

“We were older. Older than Mama is, not quite as old as Daddy,” Boyd felt as if his mouth had gone dry, and paused to work up a little bit of spit, to swallow it. “In this dream, you were a federal. You’d left--we worked the mines after high school. There was a cave-in and you took off that same night. I never heard word again. I went off, went Army, had a bad time of it and pretended it was good when I got back. I went to live in the hills, my own retreat--Mama had gone off long ago. Daddy set me up for tax evasion, and so I bellowed at the top of my lungs that yes I had. I didn’t want him to have the credit.”

Raylan had started frowning in all that, but still, his mouth was shut.

“Prison happened. I did not come out a better man, but I don’t think that’s really possible. I started trading in words and became my own sort of criminal, leading the weak minded to make a ruckus. And then you came back, and I called you out, and you shot me. And then I woke up, and can’t stop thinking about the mistakes I don’t want to make.” And goddamn, boys are not supposed to cry, but he could feel the relief and the guilt sort of wanting to gush out all over. He was done talking anyway, and sealed his mouth shut now.

“That is a hell of a lot of dream,” Raylan said, after they both just looked at each other. “The hell though, I left and you didn’t?”

“I did eventually.” Of course there would be no goddamn reason for Raylan to think it was not a dream, that it was real. The relief should not be profound enough to make him snake one arm around his knees, give in to becoming a tight ball of a person.

“Don’t sound like you did, Boyd, not really,” Raylan said. “I always have wanted to get the hell out of Harlan. Thought you’d get out too. You’re the type who could go to college.”

“So’re you,” Boyd said, because he knew it to be true. 

“Your dream tell you that?” Raylan shook his head.

“My head tells me that,” Boyd said. “Though I suppose those things are one and the same, in the end. Head and dream.” And memory.

“If you say so,” with doubt all but hanging the words and dragging them down. Then Raylan grinned, forcing it a little bit, still probably turning over all that Boyd let out. “Hell though. Who cares how. You wanna get out of Harlan? Let’s plan on it. I sure don’t want to work the mines.”

“What do you want to do?” 

“Military, maybe,” Raylan said. “Not the Army.”

“Why not?” Boyd asked, all curious.

“Daddy was in the Army,” Raylan told him.

“Oh.” Boyd nodded acknowledgement of this truth. “Right. Air Force? You gonna fly?”

“Naw,” Raylan told him. “Tell the truth, I like the way the Marines look. All polished. With a sword.”

Boyd wondered if Raylan had, in fact, joined the Marines after leaving Harlan. He’d never known. He hadn’t been sure that Raylan was alive for a long, long time. He’d been afraid that Arlo had killed him, dumped his body in the woods, down a mineshaft. 

“You sure you don’t wanna go out West, be a cowboy?” He couldn’t resist adding, “Wear a big ol’ hat?”

“I’d look good in a hat,” Raylan told him, a cocky, teasing twist on his mouth. 

“I reckon you would,” Boyd agreed. “You could go to college, though. You smart enough.”

“Hell, Boyd. I don’t make grades for college.” Just like that, deflated, air gone out of him.

“Neither did I. But I’m aiming to fix that. But you listen here--either of our daddies get wind of this, of us plannin’. You know they won’t stand for it.”

Raylan nodded. Then, he said, like offering a bit of something important to him, “Mama would like me to go to college. Hell, she’d like me to finish high school. I’d be the only one in my family.”

“Keep on comin’ to do homework,” Boyd told him. “With me and Bowman. Hell, he thinks you’re cool as shit for some reason.” This felt better, the good-natured ribbing he and Raylan had always engaged in when they were friends. 

“He’s the smarter brother,” Raylan grinned, stretching out his long legs, crossing his feet at the ankle. He’d taken off his shoes, and his socks were mismatched and hand-mended. “I’ll talk to Mama about it.”

They went to sleep, after some more talk, gossip really. Raylan liked a girl in his chemistry class but she was from town, so he didn’t have a shot. Raylan’s poverty would’ve kept the pretty town girls away from him even if his last name hadn’t been Givens. But that wouldn’t last, Boyd knew, once the girls saw him in a sleek new baseball uniform. No, once they saw him wrapped up in the school’s blue and gray, Raylan’d have his pick.

***


	5. Chapter 5

Daddy was home Monday morning, when Boyd came downstairs. Mama was awake, too, sitting with him in silence at the dining room table. They had coffee, and Daddy looked like he was waking up instead of just coming in. “Good morning, Mama, Daddy,” Boyd said, coming on into the kitchen. He reached for the cereal. Their household was better off than the Givens house, but they still got Iced Flakes from the Piggly Wiggly instead of the Frosted Flakes. How Bowman coveted the cereal box prizes. 

“Go ahead and have some coffee,” Daddy told him. “You’re man enough.” Boyd paused in the act of pouring milk over his cereal. A mental pause, not a physical one. Everything was a test with Daddy.

Humility with deference was the safest course. “Thank you, Daddy.” He finished pouring the milk on his cereal, and instead of having water or more milk with it, he dutifully got himself a cup of coffee. He’d learned in prison to take it black, and Mama’s coffee tasted far better just by default. 

He could not remember how he drank it when he was this age the first time. 

Daddy watched him, watched him take a bite of cereal, then watched him sip. Mama still hadn’t said a word, but she seemed present. Her coffee cup was half empty, pale with a generous amount of milk.

After another bite, Boyd decided to comment, “Still getting used to that.” He nodded at the black coffee. 

“Why bother, if you can have it any way you’d like?” Daddy asked, his face breaking into his wide grin, his eyes whittled sharp. 

A test. Boyd looked at Daddy’s own cup, black liquid half gone. “Suppose I want to like it a few different ways. I heard someone say you get used to the bitterness, start to like it.”

Daddy then laughed. “Well hell, son, I didn’t expect you to have an actual answer.”

“I am glad to disappoint then, in that case?” Boyd tempered that by making it sound like a question. Disappointing Daddy had been a regular and deliberate habit.

“That why you started helping your mother mind the house? Or how was it, ‘take care of the family while I was busy?’” Daddy didn’t bother answering the rhetorical question, instead striking down on a comment made weeks and weeks ago.

Boyd took another sip, and then decided to drop his act of being--no, it wasn’t an act so much anymore. Regardless, Boyd fixed his Daddy with an even look and felt his age, speaking carefully and not hiding that fact. “I know you take care of the family, Daddy. That is your trade’s purpose. But Mama keeps this family too. I know you cannot grudge me helping with her part. Though I expect you want me to help with your part more, one day.”

_ One day.  _ Not today.

Bowman had come downstairs, and now stood in the doorway. Mouth shut, gummed up, because he knew better than to interrupt. The air felt thick to breathe, even with the wind coming in through the open window.

“Of course he doesn’t grudge you helping me,” Mama said. Her voice was firm, and Boyd wondered how much effort she was taking this morning. 

Daddy wasn’t expecting her input. Still, he kept his smile and shrugged. “Though it shouldn’t be needed.” He drawled it, almost lazy, then took another sip.

“You taught me, Daddy, a man does what needs doing, that’s all my intentions have ever been.” In fact, that was the pure truth.

“And who decides what needs doing, son?” Daddy leaned forward.

“That’s supposed to be the difficult part, isn’t it? About being a man. Sometimes you just have to know, and then do it,” Boyd said. He held onto his spoon, didn’t take another bite. Didn’t take another sip of the coffee, either. 

“That is the difficult part,” Daddy agreed, sitting back. He then took a quick, but deep drink of his coffee and levered up. He lifted Mama’s hand to kiss it, then on his way to the stairs, patted Boyd and Bowman on the shoulders, in turn. It hurt, but not too much. “Do good in school, boys. I heard you’re surprising people.”

Bowman breathed out a  _ yessir  _ with wide eyes. Boyd echoed that, and coiled back into himself. Not for a second did he think that was the last time they’d talk on it. Another reprieve.

“Go on, eat,” Mama’s voice broke the spell again, and she got up. She was already drifting, heading to the porch. 

“You heard her,” Boyd said to his brother, when Bowman didn’t move.

“I don’t understand things sometimes,” Bowman whispered, when Boyd tugged his arm, pulled him to sit down.

“Sometimes there’s no understanding, I think,” Boyd answered. He knew he couldn’t let Daddy put them off, “But you heard him. Do good in school--I bet he meant  _ he’s  _ not surprised.”

“He’s proud?”

“Maybe so.”

“Maybe he’ll stay home more,” Bowman said, crunching down on cereal, not letting the thought go just yet.

Boyd sorely hoped not. 

***

Winter came on quick in the mountains. The edges of the creeks laced up with ice and bright autumn leaves browned and fell, their edges glittering. Boyd had always loved winter months, the stillness of them, the silence you could find in the hills if you walked far enough. The first time around, he’d gone off with a book, sometimes, but mostly with his thoughts, and stayed away until the cold drove him back to the house.

He looked outside, now, the first frost on the ground, remembering viscerally the silence around him. Something on the stove bubbled. He turned his back to the window, and stirred the pot of hot cocoa. Bowman had been begging for it since Monday, since the weather snapped cold, but Boyd had claimed not to have the ingredients, to make the acquisition that much sweeter. 

It had been a strange few weeks since his father’s judging conversation. Bo had begun another test, but one that at least had a transparent motivation. He gave Boyd the keys to the Honda that was supposedly Mama’s to drive (though she hadn’t in months) and a hundred dollars, telling him it was grocery money. That Boyd did not possess a valid driver’s license did not seem to cross his mind--but then, it wouldn’t, except as something Boyd needed to handle.

The problem was, Boyd had never been grocery shopping as a child, and even as an adult . . . well. He was never an epicure, content to live off rice and beans. But now he had to see to Bowman, who was growing, and hell,  _ Boyd _ was growing. Mama needed nutrition. Raylan even ate over with them more often than not. 

So the idea had come to him as he contemplated the Benjamin in his wallet, and he’d broached it when it was just the him and Raylan, Bowman having stayed late for football practice.

“I need your help,” Boyd told him as they took a break from chemistry. Balancing equations came easily for Boyd, who could recall all the little details one needed to keep in mind, but Raylan had to spend time studying each part before he could make a choice.

“Well well,” Raylan drawled. He put down his pencil. “How can I help the mighty Boyd Crowder?”

“Your daddy’s stingy with grocery money, ain’t he?”

Raylan’s face turned into that mask again. It was an expression, Boyd was sure, Raylan’s ex-wife must’ve known well. “Stingy’s generous. Why?”

“Daddy give me the grocery money. Told me to take care of it. I got Mama’s car keys, too. But--I need to make it last. Two weeks, he told me.”

“Hell, who normally does the shopping?”

Boyd reluctantly admitted, “Daddy sends one of the girls from Audrey’s to bring it by.”

“Grocery delivery by whore.” Raylan wasn’t old enough to disguise his distaste, his bitterness, and when he asked his next question, his tone was grim, like he was expecting bad news. “How much he give you?” 

“A hundred,” Boyd told him.

Raylan blinked a couple times. He picked his pencil back up and turned his head back into his books. “A hundred for two weeks. That ain’t no problem. You--what, you want my help to make it stretch? Okay.” Boyd was quite sure he’d never heard that tone before.

“I know it’s a lot of money,” Boyd said. “And it’s an important responsibility. Raylan-- Raylan.” He hooked his finger in Raylan’s elbow to get his attention. “I gotta make Daddy trust me. That means groceries to last two weeks, on a hundred. You can make a penny scream for mercy. Will you help me?”

Raylan looked up at him. Nodded, finally. His mask kept slipping in instants, revealing tumults of emotion. “Last summer,” Raylan told Boyd, quiet, “My daddy give me fifty dollars and told me he’d see me in August.” 

“Jesus.” Boyd was sure, as a child, he’d have not understood too well the implications of such a statement. However, he was only physically a child, and he knew Raylan Givens enough to know that most of that fifty had been eaten by Mizz Frances. He wondered how she could have missed her own child going hungry. For the first time, he wondered if Raylan’s mama was a pillhead.

“For fifty dollars,” Raylan told him, “I got beans, lard, a ham. Some flour. Mama had her vegetable garden. And I could shoot squirrel and possum and catch fish, sometimes. But I . . . I ain’t never been hungry like that. I didn’t know you could be hungry like that. A hundred dollars is--it’s gonna be fine. It’ll be easy. But we can--we can work it.” He looked back at his work. “Get a sale paper from the Pig. One of them they have at the register. We’ll work on it tomorrow. We’ll make those pennies weep.”

In another life, Boyd reflected, Raylan would’ve been on a coupon clipping TV show. He went about it with deadly seriousness, and showed Boyd the ins and outs, looking through the Crowder pantry and icebox. After nearly two hours at the Piggly-Wiggly, working out best value via long division on a notebook, they emerged with plenty of food. Raylan wasn’t a terrible cook, either, and he told Boyd  _ firmly _ that he was never to throw away bones again, didn’t he know that could make soup? Well, alright.

Anyway, hidden among all those groceries were the makings for hot cocoa, which Boyd had learned to cook in the desert, on a hot plate in a small, miserable tent he shared with small, miserable men, except for his buddy, Ed Greengrass from Philadelphia. Ed had been the one to share the makings of it with Boyd, on cold nights after patrols. Ed had died badly. 

Boyd didn’t think about those days, on purpose. 

Bowman and Raylan came in from throwing the football around, red-faced from the cold, noses running, and Boyd fixed them all a cup. Then, “The piece de resistance,” Boyd told them, in what he knew was a perfect pronunciation. He sprinkled marshmallows over the cups in front of Bowman’s wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Thank you, Boyd,” Raylan told him, hand cold against Boyd’s as he took the mug. Bowman’s thanks was nonverbal, in the form of contented glugs from behind his mug. Raylan held his eyes a second and winked.

Boyd grinned back, and was pouring for himself the last cup, leaving just a little more for Bowman to have seconds, when Mama appeared. She was wearing a warm sweater tied shut over a couple layers. Boyd remembered when he’d come home from those secluded hours with his books to find her on the porch in a sundress, shivering and not having eaten all day. Maybe they were pushing those days off.

He handed her his own cup without a second thought to it. 

***

Starting Christmas break, Boyd made a weekly visit to the Bennett’s store and let Mags Bennett ask after his mama, never ask about his daddy, and dispense wisdom (and maybe also a hard candy) at her discretion. Boyd never did see the Sheriff around, and that was definitely by design. 

Christmas itself, Daddy spoiled Bowman with a new football, the promise of new cleats for spring, and a whole new wardrobe almost, as Bowman had taken the first of the many stretches on his way to being taller than Daddy. Though right now he still wasn’t even up to Boyd’s shoulder, it wouldn’t be long.

Mama got a cross that was probably solid gold, to hang down to over her heart, and Boyd assumed there were other things bestowed upon her. Boyd, from Daddy, got driving lessons in the truck. Even if there was only one lesson, the one Christmas afternoon, it was one more than he’d gotten the first time he was this age. 

The strangeness of it was sharp and made Boyd uncomfortable, and ten minutes into the first, he felt compelled to ask, “Daddy, I am grateful, don’t get me wrong, but you been giving me grocery money and know I’ve driven, so why are we doing lessons now?”

Daddy laughed, “There’s a difference between knowing how to do something, son, and knowing how to do it to please someone else’s rules. Though you do seem to have this down. How often you been taking your mama’s car?”

“Not often. Johnny gives me rides most of the time, if I’m going somewhere,” Boyd said. The truth, because of many reasons, not the least of which was not wanting to get pulled over and chewed out, or worse, have to leverage Daddy’s name. That would mean a favor Daddy owed, and that would bounce right back on Boyd.

“Johnny can be dependable then?” Daddy asked.

“He is,” Boyd said back. “Though I expect with baseball season coming up, he’s going to be a little busier.”

“Why is it you never got into sports? You never even really tried,” Daddy said.

“I don’t know, Daddy. I read up on football biographies and whatnot for Bowman though. Suppose I’d be more interested in telling people what to do than doing all of it myself. But that’s not something to practice. Or is it?” They were at a stop sign, and so Boyd stopped, looked over at his Daddy. “Which way?”

“Left,” Daddy indicated with the arm flung up over the back of the bench seat.

Boyd nodded, and signaled, took the left when it was safe. He hadn’t signaled when driving since--he was a teenager. Decided to wait, keep his mouth shut for a minute under the guise of concentrating on his driving.

“You like to be in charge then?” 

There it was. “Not that. I like strategy.”

“What about being a team player?”

“I think there’s a lot to be said about cooperation, about things coming together, when everybody does what they’re supposed to.” Boyd shut his mouth then, taking a curve a little slower than he probably could. 

Daddy’s truck handled better than anything he’d driven in--well goddamn. Ever? He never did have a new truck, despite Daddy putting his name on the title of an expensive one when he got back from the Army--all so the IRS would add it to his income calculation, turn his tax evasion from nothing into a real case. All he had to do to avoid jail was ask Daddy to clear that little fact up. To owe his daddy a favor. He’d chosen jail.

“You like it when things come together. So do I, son,” Daddy was saying. When they talked, Daddy never seemed to notice his little silences. “I see you, stepping up. I know you got Arlo’s kid helping you out sometimes.”

Boyd didn’t think it wise to ask how he knew that--anyone could’ve seen them shopping. Hell, Bowman or Mama might’ve said. “Yes, Daddy. Raylan and I are friends, and he knew more about some shopping things. And Bowman is right--I can’t throw a ball the way Raylan can, so. I guess he is helping out, but I didn’t make him.”

“No, you made him want to help, and that’s an important difference,” Daddy said. “Turn right up here. You remember the way home?”

“Yessir,” Boyd said. Not sure how to take all that, but following the directions.

“Let’s see it then,” Daddy said. “Why do I always feel like you’re telling me what I want to hear?”

“I’m telling you the truth, and I hope you want to hear that,” Boyd said. Careful now. “Besides, ain’t you always testing me?”

Daddy laughed. The next stop sign, Boyd felt Daddy’s hand reach over and grip his shoulder, give it a squeeze. 

When they got home, Boyd went to hand Daddy back the keys. 

“Those are yours,” Daddy said. “You’ll drive me to pick up my new one tomorrow morning.”

Now that was one Boyd did not see coming at all. 

*** 

In the journal:

_ If too much changes, how can I make sure I’m on track? _

That should be the point, but didn’t that mean he was losing his advantages?

***


	6. Chapter 6

Before school started back, on a day as cold and mean as they come, the phone rang. Bowman answered it and talked quietly, then said, “Boyd, it’s Raylan!” and held the receiver up for Boyd to take. It was mounted to the wall, the telephone, and had a curling cord that Bowman was always winding, and Boyd was always fixing. 

“Hey there,” Boyd said when he cradled the phone between his shoulder and his ear. 

“Hey,” Raylan said. Boyd immediately strained to listen more closely. “Hey, Boyd, um. Can I come over for a while? Um, a few days, maybe?” He was talking quietly, a whisper Boyd could barely hear.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Boyd told him. “You get a bag packed and just come on out when I drive up.”

“Okay. I’ll--” The phone cut off. Boyd hurried for his coat and for the keys to his new truck. 

“Can I come?” Bowman asked him, intercepting him while he stomped into his sturdy boots.

“Best not,” Boyd said, all business, then cut off his pout-- “I mean it, Bowman.” And Boyd took the baseball bat out of the closet by the door. Bowman took a look at it, and didn’t open his mouth again, nodded instead with wide eyes.

Boyd drove angry. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find at the Givens house, but he could guess. Things had been too good lately, that surprise sleepover back in October notwithstanding. Arlo was a mean son of a bitch, just clever enough to get his way, and violent enough to force the issue when he didn’t. He could be charming, too, the way Raylan could; he could draw in strangers with stories and sweet smiles. Sometimes he loved on his family like a dropping bomb; Boyd had seen it himself, as a teenager. When Arlo was in a loving mood, he’d hold Raylan close by the shoulder, smile at him and call him son, and Raylan’s face had been--well. Thinking back on it, hadn’t he been just as scared as he was grateful?

Boyd percolated the whole way, finally turning up the dirt road that led to the Givens house. Arlo’s truck was parked out front, but Mizz Frances’s car was gone. The snowy front yard was scattered with things: new clothes, a fishing rod, a baseball glove, some papers and books. Boyd recognized one as a paperback he’d loaned Raylan. He parked, got out of the truck, and headed to the door. He picked things up on his way, wondering what in the hell had gone on. 

He noticed, as he approached the house, that Raylan’s bedroom window, upstairs, was wide open, and as he watched, something else flew out of it.

The door was open, the screen door shut, when Boyd stepped onto the porch. Across the living room, Boyd could see the steps leading up to the second floor, and sitting on them: Raylan. He was clutching his backpack, but otherwise curled up on himself, sitting on the second or third stair. One eye was swollen shut, and blood had flowed from his nose and mouth. His hair was in disarray, as if someone had grabbed it. He looked up and saw Boyd in the door, leaped to his feet, and bolted in Boyd’s direction.

From upstairs came Arlo’s roar, “ _I told you not to move, you sumbitch!”_ Boyd turned to follow Raylan, who sprinted across the cold ground, snatching up a flannel shirt that still had tags on it as he went. Boyd . . . 

Boyd waited.

Arlo came out of the house in just a t-shirt, jeans, and boots. He looked so much younger, stronger, than when Boyd had last seen him, though his hair was already white. He’d been drinking. He held one of Raylan’s belts in one hand.

“Boyd,” he said, something in his brain recalculating, seeing Bo’s son standing there, between Arlo and Raylan. Boyd had counted on it.

“I’m taking Raylan to stay with me for a while,” Boyd told him. 

“I’ll talk to your daddy about this,” Arlo promised him, nothing but venom in his veins right now. 

“Daddy likes having Raylan around,” Boyd told him. “He’s helping Bowman with ball.”

From the truck, Raylan’s desperate voice, “Boyd, come on, _please!”_

Boyd ignored him. He had a point to make. “Raylan is my friend,” Boyd said, slow, deliberate. “And he is welcome in my home.”

“You’re puttin your nose where it don’t belong!” Arlo yelled, stepping forward, raising that belt.

Boyd did not heft the baseball bat. He stepped forward. “Go ahead, Arlo.” Boyd did not look away. He’d been forged in basic training, in the desert, in pulling apart IEDs with his bare hands; in jail and prison and in gangs; he had already died. Before all that: forged in his father’s own flames. This little, angry man inspired no fear. “You go ahead and hit Bo’s eldest, favorite son, and you just see how that works out for you.”

Two and two made four in Arlo’s alcohol and rage soaked brain. He lowered the belt.

“Raylan’ll come home when he’s good and ready,” Boyd told him. He had not raised his voice even a whit. He turned his back on Arlo, returned to the truck, and started it. The things he’d gathered from the snow, he put in the space behind the bench seat for now.

They pulled out, Raylan staring dead ahead out of his one working eye. As the house receded in the mirror, Raylan started to shake and tremble. Boyd’s own hands were steady. He could have defused a bomb. 

“You hurt any place needs a doctor?” Boyd asked him, voice calm. Raylan shook his head. The flannel shirt he’d picked up was clutched in his hand, the knuckles white. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but he had on new tennis shoes. The old duct-taped pair were hopefully gone. “What set him off?”

“Mama went to Limehouse,” Raylan said. “They were fighting about her going to the hospital and he started, he--it was like. Like a bomb. And then she ran to her car and. And I was, I was stupid, I was still in the kitchen when he came back from chasing her, stupid--” The hand that wasn’t gripping the shirt grabbed at his own hair, pulling it tightly, a sharp jerk.

Boyd reached over out of instinct and grabbed Raylan’s hand, pulled it down to the space between them. He held on tight. Raylan’s hand was clammy, shivering. “None of that now,” Boyd told him, feeling a tightness in his chest. “I’ll help you get cleaned up, at the house, and you’re gonna sleep in my bed until you’re all healed up. I’ll double up with Bowman for a few days, it’ll be fine. You cold? Here.” At a stop sign, Boyd wriggled out of his own coat, shoved it into Raylan’s arms. Raylan put it on backwards, letting go of his backpack and that flannel shirt to do so. Raylan moved stiffly, and winced, and so Boyd knew it wasn’t just Raylan’s face that had gotten it. 

When Raylan put his hand back on the seat between them, Boyd took it without saying anything, and only let go when they got back to the house. Bowman was watching TV, some kind of football, which meant he was essentially comatose. Even his idol entering the house and quietly going upstairs didn’t rouse him. Boyd followed Raylan into the little upstairs bathroom and closed the door. With patience and far more practice than he’d had as a child, Boyd washed Raylan’s face and put Neosporin on his cuts. Arlo had really gone at it today; he’d knocked out one of Raylan’s teeth. It must’ve hurt like hell, but it’d come out root and all. Still, Boyd went to search Mama’s medicine cabinet, came back with a hydrocodone and some old antibiotics. It might not be medically sound, but it was better than nothing, and he gave them both to Raylan. Raylan held the frozen peas to his face like he was an old hand at household black-eye remedies--and Boyd supposed he was.

Then, Raylan took off his t-shirt. If Arlo had only hit him once, Boyd would’ve been able to see the shape of what Raylan had been hit with, but Raylan’s side and back were a solid mass of bruise. On his back, there were places that looked like he’d been lashed with the belt, with the buckle side of it, and Boyd put Neosporin on those cuts, too. Sitting on the toilet, face turned away, Boyd could still see the tears leaking out of his eyes. 

Boyd simmered. He thought about brake lines and how to over-pack a shotgun shell to make it explode in the gun. He thought about mineshafts and poisoned liquor and bullets to the temple and the baseball bat he’d left downstairs. 

“He was in a good mood,” Raylan said quietly. “How come she had to bring up the doctor’s?”

“He’s a fuse soaked in gasoline,” Boyd corrected him. “Any little thing woulda done it. Don’t you go blaming her for what he done. Though she deserves it for leaving you there, in my opinion.”

Raylan’s head jerked in denial. “He’s worse on her,” Raylan told him, and Boyd didn’t quite believe him. “Sometimes I wish he was dead.” 

Boyd wondered what Arlo would do, given a second chance at his own life. He washed his hands and ran his fingers through Raylan’s hair, not in a hurry to move him while he was letting the drugs kick in. “I wish I could make it happen for you,” Boyd told him. He expected a surprised reaction from Raylan as soon as it tripped out of his mouth, but Raylan squeezed his good eye shut.

“Come on,” Boyd finally said, after a few minutes more. “You can borrow something of mine to sleep in.” They crept together to Boyd’s bedroom, and Boyd gave him something warm to wear. Boyd’s room was chilly. He felt oddly paternal, helping Raylan to lie down on the little bed by the window, pulling the covers up. He started to leave, but Raylan’s hand caught Boyd’s.

“Stay? Read to me maybe?”

Boyd stood still a minute, but then he nodded. He found a book he’d been meaning to return to the library. “This is a little bloody,” he said, holding it up.

“It got a good ending?”

“Sure does. If you’re on one side of things, anyway.”

“Okay then,” Raylan said, and closed his eyes. Boyd sat on the bed in the space vacated by Raylan’s curled up legs, and began to read.

“‘This story is about time and memories. The time was 1965, a different kind of year, a watershed year when one era was ending in America and another was beginning. We felt it then, in the many ways our lives changed . . .’”

Boyd read straight through the Prologue and into Chapter 1. Raylan drifted to sleep somewhere in there, and Boyd closed Hal Moore’s memoir. He sat still until he was certain Raylan was lost in the dreams, then he got up, and went to talk to Mama. He’d heard the soft creak of a stair earlier. 

She was in her room, he could tell as soon as he stepped out. Upstairs there were four bedrooms; one each for him and Bowman, a master for Mama and Daddy, and then another room that had been repurposed long ago for Mama’s things. She had a sewing machine, covered for years, near the window. Now she sat in a comfortable chair, which sat kitty-corner and facing both the door and the window, if she just turned her head. Her Bible was in her lap, closed.

Boyd was reminded, very briefly, of the creature wearing her face when he died. She looked intent, and focused. Boyd got the stool out from under the sewing machine’s table, and pulled it up to sit by her chair.

When he sat, she reached over and ran a hand back through his hair, petting a little bit, and rubbed his back like he was young.

“What did you say?” She asked, after sitting like that a minute. She spoke quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I said Raylan would come back when he’s good and ready. Arlo also--he looked like he wanted to hit me too,” And wasn’t that a thing, saying it aloud? Can’t remember ever doing that. It felt like a secret, though of course most people who knew Arlo, well they knew _about_ Arlo.

“But he did not,” Mama prompted him.

“No--Mama. I told him if wanted to hit Bo Crowder’s eldest, he should see how that worked out for him,” Boyd told her. “Daddy might get mad. He don’t like interference.”

“You went over to see your friend, show off your Daddy’s Christmas present,” Mama said. “You didn’t know what you were going to find.”

That wasn’t true, though--Boyd wondered if she didn’t hear the phone, if Bowman didn’t say anything. Maybe Bowman had been comatose in front of the TV on purpose, keeping his mouth shut and distracted.

Boyd wet his lips to tell her--but. She was watching him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“My smart boy,” she said. She rubbed his back again. “Frances went to Limehouse, or she’d be here too.”

He nodded. “Mama, I don’t know what to do. I want to kill him.” There it was, some truth, and he spoke it seriously, not a hint of hyperbole sneaking in. It felt like a confession as much as telling Raylan about his “dream” had been.

She did not seem surprised, though. 

But then, Boyd thought--she’s the woman who married Daddy. For the first time, somehow, Boyd wondered how they were when they were younger. He wondered--a few things. But more, he waited for her to answer, the moment stretching, _Please let her stay with me, a little longer._

“You’re right. Your daddy don’t like interference,” she finally said. Still with him. “But how would he find out you invoked his name? Think on that.”

So Boyd did, and for a moment, he felt young and foolish. Maybe just foolish. Because like hell Arlo would willingly tell that he backed down from a boy whose sixteenth was coming up next month. And that is exactly how Daddy would hear it, too. Maybe he was still so used to Daddy trying to torment him, he forgot what it was like before the stakes rose so high. “I think I see.”

“There’s great goddamn value in keeping your mouth shut,” Mama said. But then she smiled, “But I’m glad you told me, just the same. Don’t worry about this no more.”

He wasn’t sure how that would be possible. Felt like all he did was worry and plan sometimes. “Yes, ma’am.” All the same, there was a right answer to give her.

“It’ll work itself out,” she went on. “You’ll see. Now go on downstairs, let Raylan sleep, and let me think. After you hug my neck, though. I can’t remember the last time you came asking for my help.”

Neither could he.

***

Mama’s head wasn’t quite there that evening, so Boyd heated up some food for supper and brought the plate upstairs to her. 

By that time, Boyd had told Bowman that Raylan had a shiner, and he’d be staying over. And if he liked Raylan, then he’d let Raylan tell him about it if he wanted, because otherwise that was rude, and they were friends, weren’t they?

Bowman had nodded, eyes big and nervous when he said _I promise, I promise Boyd._ It made Boyd wonder how his little brother ever could grow up to think beating his wife wasn’t even something to try and hide.

Daddy had business going on, so dinner was quiet, and Bowman told Raylan all about the games he’d watched that afternoon, and then chattered on about maybe-tomorrow-or-the-next-days about the rest of the Christmas break. It was a lot of words for Bowman to not let any of them be questions, and Boyd felt damn proud. The effort though, well, it seemed to wear Bowman out, and he disappeared to find more sports to watch. For his part, Raylan was drifting on a cloud of opioids, eating the grits and scrambled eggs Boyd had made for supper in a daze, though he was giving a great impression of paying attention.

That night, Bowman didn’t even whine too much about Boyd shoving him over and taking half the bed. By that time, when they were filtering in and out of the bathroom they shared, Raylan was having to turn his head a little bit--his black eye was swollen near shut.

Next day, when Boyd woke up, it was to the sound of a car engine turning over in the cold. He thought it might be Daddy, having come home sometime in the night and leaving again but--

The sound was Mama’s Honda. 

Boyd sat up, listened, wondering if he was hearing that from that strange place between dreaming and waking. The house was quiet: No sound from Raylan in Boyd’s regular bedroom, and Bowman was drooling into his pillow with one leg and two arms somehow hanging off the bed. 

Next thing Boyd knew he was standing downstairs, looking out the front window, watching the tail lights disappear in the early morning cold mist. The next thing he knew after that, he was looking at the note laying on top of the truck keys. Mama’s tight, looping print said: _Back by lunch. Don’t worry._

Boyd folded the note up tiny and held it in his hand tight enough that the paper made red little marks in his palm. Then he went back upstairs, sat down against the headboard in Bowman’s room, and pretended to read.

***

Mama did come back by lunch, ate a sandwich, and then went upstairs to read her Bible. 

***

That night, Daddy was back from whatever he’d been doing the past couple days, and he stayed home a full day in which he watched television, drank beer, and asked Bowman to show him how good he was getting. Which meant Raylan throwing the ball to him, and Boyd standing beside Daddy with his hands shoved in his pockets, jumping up and down sometimes to shake off the cold. Daddy seemed impervious to it, wearing a light camo jacket and a big grin on his face

Not a word passed his lips that even hinted that he noticed the state of Raylan’s face, or that he was staying over, even.

Day before school started, Mizz Frances came by, took one look at Raylan’s face, and without looking at Boyd (or Bowman, pressing his face to the window with a curtain pulled up around him like it would somehow hide him). They drove off, purportedly for Helen’s house. Not a word about Arlo.

It was a few weeks into school before Boyd asked Raylan, whose face was healed up, who’d told everyone that he was practicing baseball and missed a fly ball. There was still no word about Arlo. He’d left the house with the door wide open, his truck gone, and the clothes he tended to take when he lit out on shitkicking business.

***

It wasn’t until a week before baseball tryouts, all the way in late February, that Boyd realized they may never get word about Arlo again. He asked Raylan about it, once, while they were alone on a drive. Raylan just said he hadn’t heard from Arlo. And neither had his mama.

Boyd didn’t bother asking again. No need.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boyd reads to Raylan from "We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young: Ia Drang--The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam" by Harold G. Moore. In the original short story, “Fire in the Hole,” Boyd is a Vietnam veteran, so this is a bit of a nod to that.


	7. Chapter 7

Spring break rolled around, and because it was the thick of baseball season, that meant going to more than a couple games during the day. Sunlight instead of big field lights made a difference, made the game a warmer thing to watch. It also meant forsaking a seat on the metal bleachers for the shade had its drawbacks in that the metal would be searing hot again if he waited too long to go back to it. 

Then again, Boyd found he could stand all day near the dugout in the shade, ear bent to Johnny’s so-called understandings of the other team. They were playing Cumberland High, just up the road and barely over the county line. What that meant most though was that Dickie Bennet, all wires and junior year swagger at being the starting pitcher, was on the mound.

The Sheriff was still breathing, and that’s how Boyd knew this was not the year Dickie would nail Raylan’s skull with a baseball and start a fight that would end both their aspirations with the game. Truth was, Boyd couldn’t remember what year that had been until he’d been back. It felt like a distant memory now, one that he didn’t have first hand, but had heard time and again from Johnny instead.

Now he stood listening, and Johnny had somehow corralled Raylan into the conversation. Couple others were listening in--Teddy Henkins, third base, as well as Marty and Exer Robins, twins who both played outfield. 

Johnny was saying, “Dickie thinks he’s hot shit. Just wait until I get up there, I’ll show him how to throw a fastball.”

“That so?” Boyd asked. “Thought your curveball was _your_ hot shit?”

“Yeah, and my fastballs’ good too. That’s two pitches--Dickie’s just got the one.”

“Yeah, but he’s wild when he gets tired,” Raylan added in.

“That’s why you let it hit you, get a free base.” Johnny said, as if him being an upper classman gave him true insight.

“Uh-huh,” Teddy said. Boyd watched, and the Robins twins also were nodding. So was Raylan.

“Yeah, and when you do that, everyone know you ain’t scared,” Raylan agreed.

“The hell you all talking about?” Boyd interrupted, spacing all his words out. “You get hit in the head, you get a concussion, you might not play again.”

They were laughing though, all four of them. “Shit,” Johnny said, his voice a little quieter for that one word, lest the coach hear. He went on in a normal volume, “No it won’t.”

“It could, asshole. It ain’t football--I know you have those helmets, but what the hell, bring your arm up and take it there instead?” Boyd did not feel in control all of a sudden, almost livid at the thought of _what the hell, why take that chance?_

“Then you could break your arm,” Exer of the _who the hell asked you_ outfield said.

“Course you’d say that, you ain’t never been on base unless you walked,” Boyd heard the words shoot out his mouth, and then snapped it shut. 

There was more laughter, but not at him, at Exer who was sputtering. His twin especially thought that it as funny, from the elbow in Exer’s ribs and the big grin on Marty’s.

“I’m just _saying,_ ” Exer was defending himself, “A concussion isn’t a big deal. My cousin JC got one and all he had to do was stay up all night and eat ice cream.”

Boyd rolled his eyes. “Well maybe I care about what’s in my head more than y’all do,” and with that, closed his mouth on it.

Dickie Bennett threw a strike, and the dugout started yelling for their at-bat to not let another by. Boyd let it drop, or rather, let the whole thing get carried away with the game. Between innings, when no one he cared about was doing anything other than running out to their positions, Boyd walked over to the other side to say hello to Mags, there with Coover and making him sit, a lunk of a shadow at her side. It was a surprise when Coover said hello as well, before going back to trying to look over the side, down at a couple girls who were standing in the shade there. Boyd beat his retreat before the catcher threw the inning warm-up to second to warn anyone against stealing.

When Boyd came back, he felt a little less odd, more settled on this-now. The not-yet still wasn’t close, not as close as it would be next year. Bowman was under the bleachers, in the shade with a couple of his friends. The game passed. Raylan hit two runs in, won the game, but not off one of Dickie’s pitches. Johnny did all right too.

The game ended, the dry dust caught up in a little bit of wind that had started making pop flies a little wilder to catch. It had made the last hit of the game have a little bit of near-miss drama as one of Cumberland’s seniors nearly hit an in-field home run as a result. Raylan was still talking about it when he got in the truck, Bowman scooting to the center of the bench seat. Boyd let it all pass over, drove on home, only a little bit surprised--

“Thought you’d be heading off with Johnny and everyone, celebrate your win,” Boyd said, when they were in his room. Raylan had taken a shower already, and Boyd was about to go. Seemed fair to let the one who’d had to slide a couple times get the first crack. 

“Hell, we’re playing another tomorrow, two games. We all keep hanging around each other, we’re going to go nuts,” Raylan said.

“Suppose that’s true enough,” Boyd replied. He had no idea if such things were true, having never played. 

“You got real mad today at him,” Raylan said, abrupt. “He didn’t get it. Hell, I don’t get it. This one of those things?”

“What things?” Boyd said. Did he mean--one of those things he was so weird about, or--

“One of those things that if you don’t do the sport, you don’t get. Like when you get a skinned knee from sliding on a rock, or whatever, and you don’t feel it until later,” Raylan said. He thumbed his knee, carefully, where a fresh bandaid was plastered.

Relief felt a bit like a cold drink of water. “I guess so,” Boyd said. “I don’t like the idea of taking any kind of hit to the head. Or you, or Johnny, or hell, that dumbass _Exer_ doing it. Seems like--what’s mama say? ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face.’?”

“You gotta take a hit sometime,” Raylan said, tone all mild, but his eyes sharp as anything.

Maybe it was peculiar of Boyd--he was getting mad again, that cool drink of relief turning icy. “No, Raylan. No, you don’t.” And Boyd knew he was treading on a dangerous topic, entirely on accident. Freudian slip? _Goddamn it-_ -“Not in baseball. Maybe sometimes in other things, but baseball’s a game. Don’t you play it to have fun?”

Raylan was not taking any offense, though, apparently. He just sat and looked at Boyd, like he was calculating. “All right, you may have a point.”

Boyd did not know if he was being condescended to or not, and he didn’t like that uncertain feeling. He hadn’t written in his coded journal for a few weeks now. But his eyes strayed to it. He couldn’t help it. Uncertainty for him, it was becoming a problem.

“What do you write in that? We’ve got bets going,” Raylan broke in.

Boyd opened his mouth, closed it. He remembered acutely when he told Raylan the future in the guise of it being all a dream, a life changing dream. “It’s like a journal, but not. Who’s betting?”

“Bowman, me, Johnny. Bowman snuck it once, said it looked like gibberish. I figured you had a code,” Raylan said. He grinned a bit, too, nearly whispering, like he was telling a secret.

“I do,” Boyd said. On whim, he snatched it up, and then sat down heavy next to Raylan on the floor, and opened it up--“Go on.”

Raylan took it, did look through, and Boyd held his breath tight in his chest when Raylan found his own page--and passed over it. Code, that was the point of it, and yet. Raylan kept going, and for the first time, Boyd noticed that he’d nearly used every page. That seemed like something he should’ve noticed before.

Why had he not?

“Your thoughts are your own,” Raylan said. He handed the journal back, glorified notebook that it was. “Almost full.”

_Almost a fool, that’s me,_ Boyd thought, and shook the pun out of his head lest he say it. “I was just noticing.”

“Last time I saw you writing in it, I did. Guess you were too busy actually doing the writing.” And now Raylan looked a little sheepish, head ducked slightly, and in a flash he had gone into his backpack and pulled out--a new notebook. Vinyl covered, a nice one, not cheap--not the sort Raylan carried. But not remarkable enough to be a giveaway, either. 

Boyd did the only thing he could do, and took it. Ran his fingers over the sturdy cover, and knew that this, it was a gift. “Thank you, Raylan.”

“Figured you’d need a new one to fill up.” Raylan was looking down, watching how Boyd was holding the new notebook. 

And Boyd supposed, well. He was holding it like it was more than just bound blank pages. “I do indeed. I think I’ll write some new things in this one though.” 

“You going to do it in code?” Raylan asked, grinning again now that the gift was given, received. “I bet it’s hard to do, like translating what you want to say before you say it.”

“It is, and I am getting a bit tired of it,” Boyd admitted.

“Then don’t, unless you got real secrets to keep,” Raylan said, throwing a light elbow into Boyd’s ribs. 

“Hell, maybe I’ll come up with a few. Or work on my next essay for some contest, put Bowman right off before he gets to the good stuff,” Boyd said, elbowing back. 

“I won’t tell,” Raylan promised.

***

Next day, before they left for the ball field with Raylan in his away-white uniform, Boyd threw his old journal away in the kitchen trash. 


	8. Epilogue

Boyd swung the hammer twice-- _ bang, bang _ \--and carefully situated the wire. He criticized the placement, measuring it with a tool to make sure it was just right. Precision was important, in some things more than others. It wasn’t quite right, and he took the wooden frame down to try it again.

“Jesus, Boyd,” Raylan moaned, melodramatically, from the couch on which he’d flung himself. “I’m hungry. Bowman’s already called twice.”

“Bowman can wait five more minutes,” Boyd told him and--there. The bubble stayed dead center in the level. He stepped back, examined his handiwork, then nodded. He looked at Raylan, at the flush of embarrassed pride on Raylan’s face. It was a diploma Boyd had hung in the living room of their small house near Atlanta, awarding Raylan Givens a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work, with all the rights and privileges accorded thereunto, from the University of Georgia.

Boyd was so damn proud of him, he thought he’d burst. He sat on the couch beside Raylan, close enough for their shoulders to brush. Raylan leaned warm against him. “How come you didn’t hang up yours?” Raylan asked him. “How come I didn’t think about hanging up yours?”

“You can hang up the next one,” Boyd told him. 

“Doctor Crowder, huh?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. He grinned over at Raylan. Raylan grinned back, gazing at him, and for a moment, they were lost in the looking at each other. This was a thing Boyd had never experienced, not in his sixty, total, years of life. The older he became here, though, the more that first life seemed like a horrible dream. “How’d you like to live in Florida?” Boyd asked him.

“Florida?”

“On the coast. Could drive to the beach every day.”

“Take a while to drive home to visit Bowman and Mama,” Raylan said, using the word to refer to Boyd and Bowman’s mother, and not his own, who had been dead and buried more than a decade.

“We could fly,” Boyd offered. 

“Jee-sus,” Raylan laughed. “Look at us, next we’ll be summering in Aspen or some shit.”

“Pretty sure rich folks summer in the Hamptons, and hit Aspen for skiing.”

“Well, get on it,” Raylan told him, nudging his side with his opposite hand, which then spread across his stomach in an affectionate hold. Just like that, Boyd knew how happy Raylan really was, how full of good things Raylan felt, and Boyd echoed them. “What’s in Florida, anyway?”

“NASA,” Boyd told him. “But that’s eventually. I gotta find a PhD program that’ll take me.”

“That what you been writing in that journal?” He nodded to the one on the coffee table, pen tucked inside it, the white leather binding soft and supple. 

“Partly,” Boyd told him. “We can talk about it more, later.”

“Yeah, we got time.” Raylan kissed his cheek and stood, tugging Boyd to his feet. Raylan had grown tall, lean, and handsome; Boyd’s own youth no longer felt like a blessing. He just felt good. He had one small tattoo on the knuckle of the ring finger on his right hand: an ouroboros, a reminder of the secret he could never share.

He hooked his right hand around Raylan’s waist, walking with him towards the front door. Bowman, Mama, and Bowman’s fiance Joanna were waiting for them at their hotel, and they were all going to get Mexican food together, then ice cream, to celebrate Raylan’s graduation. 

“We got years and years,” Boyd told Raylan, and outside, the day was so, so bright.


End file.
